*33 - Trust

"Where's the rest?"

Cassidy couldn't say that Jon's question was exactly astonishing.  When presented with the idea of  a partial treasure, it was only natural to ask about the remainder, but he was going to be disappointed in the answer.

"A portion of Pappy's half went by the wayside through the years. Circumstances necessitated that some be used just to keep the family afloat, particularly durin' the Depression.  After it was passed down to each first-born son through the generations, this is about a third of that half.  The other half of the treasure, though?  It's hard tellin' what Arbutus did with it and, if Pappy knew, that part of the story didn’t make it down as far as me."

His cheekbones appeared extraordinarily sharp from this angle, magnified by the intense concentration he was bestowing upon her little treasure.  She didn't have to look at it to know what he was visually cataloging.   It was a chaotic hodgepodge of twenty dollar gold coins embossed with "Confederate State of America" and two-ounce gold bars.  Those were stamped simply with "CSA" and the year 1863.

They'd been separated into multiple boxes long ago, simply because a hundred and seventy-five pounds of gold was too unwieldy.  The one she'd unearthed was the littlest and the one her grandmother had kept hidden in the house, but there were three bigger boxes buried around the cabin.  All told, they held approximately two hundred bars and twelve hundred coins.

And every one of the little bastards was her burden to bear.

"Well, I gotta tell ya," he intoned regretfully, eyebrows lifting as he crooked his neck to look at her.  "I'm gonna have to call bullshit."

Cassidy's own eyebrows slammed down as she slitted offended eyes. How dare he question this - her family legacy?  How else in the world did he think she would be in possession of something that was quite obviously exactly what she claimed it to be.

"I beg your pardon?"

He shook his head with an impatient frown.  “When you first mentioned a secret, you said the tabloids wouldn’t pay for it.  That’s bullshit.  They’d pay for your story.”

“Oh.”  The indignant outrage melted away and she kicked up one side of her mouth to offer a lopsided grin.  “Thank ya for clearin’ that up.  For a minute there, I thought you were pointin' that comment toward my tale.”

"The story is incredible, but not unbelievable.  What’s unbelievable is that you've got that shit buried in the yard instead of in a vault or museum someplace.  Why?"

A frown tugged insistently at her smile, trying to drag it down with the weight of her commitment.  Sometimes family was a pain in the fanny, no matter how much you loved them.  All she’d ever been interested in doing was making a decent life for herself and Calliope, but her grandmother spent ten years piling on more guilt than a Baptist preacher during a tent revival.  As a result, Cassidy was now the first female keeper of the gold. 

She was also a thorn in her Uncle Stanley’s side.  Being the first-born son of his generation, he was the “rightful” heir and didn’t appreciate her interception of his legacy. 

Really, really, really didn’t appreciate it.   

Lord, I’m tired of fightin’ this fight.  It’s been almost two months.  You reckon we could finish this up so I can resume my normal life – or a slightly different version that involves these fine music folks?  Please?  In Jesus’s name, Amen.

“That’s not what my grandmother wanted,” she reported with unusual melancholy.  Great care was taken in folding the muslin back over the gold and easing the strongbox lid back in place.  “This is a family legacy, not a personal asset.  She took her responsibility to protect it very seriously and explicitly requested that I preserve our legacy.  I have no choice but to honor her wishes.”

The combination lock was reattached to the box and snapped shut with a metallic click that echoed in the quiet woods.  Rising to her knees, Cassidy lifted the box to carefully re-seat it in the hole before using her hands to shove the displaced dirt onto the lid.   

For the first time since the landmark night that sent her scurrying out of Moreland, Georgia, Cassidy felt the full weight of obligation bearing down and crushing her.  It was joined by the weight of choices the obligation had forced her to make and, for the first time, she questioned her grandmother’s wisdom in assigning her this task.  What a relief it would be if she could just walk away and leave Libby to deal with the family legacy and all the accompanying headaches.

You can’t walk away, so stop it.  Good things happen to good people.  You will get through this and be better for it in the end.

“Dixie?”

The big rock had been righted atop the golden grave, but Cassidy hadn’t risen.  She’d simply allowed her bottom to drop and sat on her feet, kneeling before it while lost in a maelstrom of troubling thoughts.  His subdued voice beckoned her back.

“Yeah, baby doll?”  Heavy lips made it a struggle to smile, but she found a way while rising to her feet and dusting the knees of her pants. 

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothin’ of consequence.  You want somethin’ to drink?  I prob'ly have some bottled water in the fridge.”

She scooped up the ruby shoes and padded toward the front door, noticing that Tucker was on the stoop with a gift.  That cat and his conquests.  He probably had almost as many as Jon; the only difference was that the conquered chipmunks didn’t live to share the story.

Good distraction, girl.  Think about human and feline tomcats to keep from feelin' sorry for yourself. 

“Hey.”  The rock star conqueror in question snagged her wrist as she walked by his chair, blessedly unaware that she’d been comparing his prowess to that of a weathered orange tomcat.  Even so, he moved with the grace of a feline, rising lithely to hover over her with disquieted features.  “Do you know what attracted me to you?”

The muscles of Cassidy’s stomach clutched in a fierce reaction to the mildly uttered query.  This was a definite three-sixty from the yoke of responsibility and she was vain enough to be enormously interested in discovering that particular why. 

“No,” she returned quietly, wholly mesmerized by the intensity of his gaze. 

It was only her wrist that he physically touched.  There was a good foot that separated any other parts of their bodies, but his eyes bridged the gap to touch her as surely as his hand did.

“I’m completely bewitched by your aura of happiness.  It radiates from you like perpetual sunshine, completely defining you.  It left just now.  Wanna tell me why?”

I’d rather have the happiness back.   

She dug deep – deeper than she’d ever had to before –  in search of a believable counterfeit smile to wear for him.  “I believe I recall somethin’ about tyin’ my ass to a bed?”

“Dixie-"

“Jon, please,” she implored, feeling uncharacteristically fragile after exposing something that had been held so closely. “I’ve asked you for nothin’, but now I’m beggin’ you to give me this.”

If he pushed the matter she would break into an oodle of pitiful pieces and she wouldn’t be able to stand that.  It wasn’t who she was, nor who she wanted to be, and Cassidy just needed him – his body – to hold the pieces together until her internal superglue dried.  Then she’d be just fine again. 

“Okay.” His response was slow in coming and he sounded none too sure of it.  “If that’s what you really want.”

“It is.”  She laced her fingers through his, towing him along behind her.  “Watch out for the dead chipmunk in front of the door.  Tucker thinks I like ‘em, so he brings ‘em every few days.”

“Tucker’s that cat?”  Jon nodded toward the orange tabby that had skittered off the stoop to peek at them from around the corner.

“Mhm.”

“I don’t like cats.”

Cassidy twisted the knob and stepped inside, bringing Jon in behind her before closing the door.  “Me neither.  He stays outside.”

“Good.”

His hand was permitted to drift free of hers only because she needed it to remove the sunglasses from her head, draw the white t-shirt over her head and toss them both toward the end table.  Her bra followed suit just before she shimmied perfectly curved hips until both her jeans and panties hit the floor.  They were slowly scooted aside and she turned to him with an air of expectation.

“You’re overdressed.”

Jon thought she was beautiful.  She was beautiful with the tousled cloud of copper waves, artfully flawless makeup applied to striking features and a body that wouldn’t quit.  But the cloud of melancholy that enveloped her felt wrong.  It dulled her beautiful sunshine in an ugly way and he was uncontrollably compelled to improve that weather forecast.

“On the bed, sweetheart,” he requested quietly before taking note of the colorful patchwork that was draped over it.  “Take off the quilt first.  I can’t have sex with Dorothy and Toto staring at me.”

That earned him a genuine smile, and she agreeably removed it to fold and drape over the arm of the loveseat.  There was only a neutral colored blanket staring back at him now and he had no concerns that it would make him feel like a pedophile.  The way he was ogling her naked form when she sashayed back to the bed to lie on her back and sensually arrange herself for him...  It might constitute lechery.

Brilliant blue eyes regarded him with an air of expectancy as she waited for him to join her, but when he moved to fulfill that expectation, Cassidy interrupted his approach with an upheld hand.

“Oh, no,” the sultry Southern beauty objected.  “Sexy men are not welcome in my bed while fully clothed and, with a body like yours, it’s a sin to be anything but nekkid.”

“I would argue with you.”  His hat and sunglasses were carelessly tossed onto the small bistro table near the bed and his t-shirt was peeled away to join her quilt on the loveseat.  “But since I feel the same way about yours, I’ll willingly comply with the Casa de Cassidy dress code.”

When he kicked off his shoes and reached for his belt buckle, he couldn’t help but notice how her eyes riveted themselves to his waist.  From the way that her pupils dilated, he could tell something there aroused her.  He just wasn’t sure if it his hands or the belt that held her rapt fascination.

“There is somethin’ unspeakably hot about a man removin’ his belt.” She glanced up with the answer to his unspoken question when his hands stilled.  “That thick black leather and nondescript buckle might as well be dipped in a big ole bucket of pheromones.”

Although he’d teased about it, and she had mentioned it herself in an effort to distract him, Jon hadn’t intended to tie her up.   He still didn’t really want to, but the way she was ogling the belt that now hung open at his waist gave him pause.  Would she like to be bound by the object she found so hot?

Next time.

“I’ll remember that.”

He let it fall to the floor, still looped through his jeans, and stepped free of the denim to strip his socks away.  There would come a time when the promises in her beguiling eyes wouldn’t affect him this way.  The day would arrive when he wasn’t turned on by the lure of her subtly parted legs as she waited for him in bed.  Sometime, eventually, he wouldn’t possess this compelling need to drive to her very core in an effort to lose himself.   

He was sure of it.

He just didn’t know when.

Today – now – he was still completely enamored of her and the way she physically commanded him without a touch.

It’s not about you this go ‘round.

“Put your hands over your head.”

The eyebrow she arched spoke of arrogance.  It said that Cassidy was willing to let him play, but that he was on a short leash and, if the play didn’t quite suit her, then she would damn well take control of the situation.

The play would suit her.  He would suit her.

“Your unbound hands mean nothing,” he murmured, coming to lie on his side next to her.  One hand slipped into the subtle offering at the convergence of her thighs and she purred softly when he stroked her there.  “Other than the fact I trust you.”

Leaning forward to take an over-plump nipple into his mouth, he gave it a sharp bite that lifted her spine from the mattress. 

“I trust you to keep your hands exactly where they are,” he expounded, stretching forth to grant her other nipple the same sharp bite.  His reward was a quiet hiss accompanied the same arching of her spine.  “And do you know what you’re going to do in return, my enticing Southern belle?”

The hand between her thighs nudged lower, sneaking into the coveted shrine that every woman ruled over and every man longed to rule over.

She was hot.  She was wet.  She was boosting her hips to meet his invasion.

“What?” she purred, pelvis insistently rocking against his hand.  His unabashedly independent lover was, once again, seeking to secure her own pleasure.

Not this time, baby.

“You… are going to trust me.” 

While two fingers were nuzzled into her channel, his thumb angled to tickle the clit that was already swollen with erotic anticipation.  Jon bent to inhale the curve of her neck and was tempted to taste, so he gently nibbled along that very same slope.  He was careful not to mark her this time, but insistent that she acknowledge his efforts.  There would be no cease to the nip, nibble and tug that unrelentingly assaulted her fair flesh until she physically acknowledged its effect on her.

When she stubbornly refused to bend to his will, he bit harder, dismissing the idea of keeping her skin pristine.  She would damn well wear another mark for her obstinacy, and the sucking gasp that it ripped from her was supremely satisfying.  Jon’s dick swelled with arrogant pride.

“What… am I trustin’ you for?”

The breathless question made him smile as his nose rubbed over her throat.  Heated lips scrubbed their way around the feminine column and he extended his tongue to take in her faint flavor.  When he’d reached the other side, Jon’s tongue slipped to that sensitive spot just beneath her ear, briefly lapping at it before he sucked her earlobe between his teeth and drew on it as he would her nipple. 

“You,” he breathed heavily into the shell of her ear.  “Will trust me to take care of you.”

A quiet moan swelled into the air when his fingers caressed the sweet spot deep inside her, and she pitched her hips forward in search of more stimulation.  She chased after the thumb that teased her clit while simultaneously driving his touch deeper. 

Cassidy was determined to claim her orgasm.

“Stop,” he commanded.

The single word was inordinately loud in the wake of their whispers, and he felt her go stiff and still under his touch.  Jon, however, continued to kiss over her jaw, along her cheekbone and eventually her lips, while maintaining the slip and slide glide into her very core. 

“I’ll take care of you, Dixie.”  His voice was once again no more than a breath of sound as Jon provocatively licked the fullness of her bottom lip.  “You will… not… miss out on anything important.”

Oh great Heavenly day. 

Cassidy was helpless to control the trembling of her limbs.  She could only pray he believed it was because of the touch that warmed her from the inside out, instead of his lover’s promise.

He wanted to take care of her. 

On the surface, the words were nearly as overwhelming as the intent behind them, which was that he was taking complete accountability for her orgasm.  She didn’t have to pump gas at the self-service pump, because he planned to provide full-service.  She would shatter at his hand, or not at all.

Had she ever placed that kind of trust in a man?

The short answer was "no".  Not since high school anatomy class when she’d figured out all the best spots and how to manipulate them.  There had been no need for anybody to “give” her an orgasm.  She enjoyed the act of her body coupling with a man, but was solely reliant on herself for the grand finale.

This could be... interestin’. 

His cutting teeth against her shoulder distracted Cassidy from the significance at work here and forced physical needs ahead of mental.  All sensation was abnormally amplified when he climbed to straddle her and the hair on his thighs decadently chafed the smooth skin of hers.  She heard him expel the breath he’d been holding while that one hand found a way to resume its magic in her hoo-ha, both inside and out. 

His other hand meandered along on the curves and valleys of her body with the scantest of touches. It was feather-soft in its journey up and down her arms, across her breasts and torso, down low on her belly, back up to her throat.  Nothing so deliberately gentle had ever brought her so much pain, and the ghost of an impression did nothing but taunt her, obliging her to ache for something more substantial.

“More,” she breathed, head restlessly shifting against the pillow. 

“Soon.” 

His tongue claimed full possession of her mouth and both hands rose to cradle her face so that he might do it at his will, not hers.  She whimpered as he took a prolonged tour, sampling each elusive corner with the intent of seeking out any bit of Cassidy that she might be holding in reserve. 

She could’ve saved him the trouble.  There was nothing held back when their tongues mated like well-acquainted lovers, slithering erotically together in a kiss so deep, so intimate, that it belonged only behind drawn shades under the dark of night.  It was made all the more indecent by the late-afternoon sun that kissed her skin as familiarly as Jon did.

“I want you,” she lamented, enraptured by the glossy sheen on his lips when their mouths parted.  “Please.”

“Soon.”

Narrow masculine hips shimmied down until Jon was in perfect position to execute another type of painstakingly intimate kiss. 

“Ohhhh!”  In a move that was completely beyond her control, Cassidy’s hands plunged into his hair to clutch at him.  To guide him.  If he would follow a little direction, she could -

“Hands up,” Jon growled, his breath hot against her.

“But-“  Even if she wasn’t driving the bus, she didn’t want to relinquish her hold.  The sensation of his hair licentiously tickling at the webbing of her fingers while his mouth greedily consumed her lady parts was… delightful.

“Trust. Me.”

Cassidy’s hands instantly returned to where they belonged.

Holy Hannah.  Holy guacamole.  Holy shitake mushrooms.

Two simple words.  Uttered an uncountable number of times throughout history in that exact same order.  Yet he might as well have been God Almighty Himself speaking directly to her soul.  That’s how strongly it affected her.  Clutching heart and seized lungs aside, her uterus contracted so fiercely that he was almost unable to insert his wandering fingers back into their favorite hidey hole. 

Sex talk.  That’s all it was.  That’s all he intended it to be, and the intent was delivered with a resounding wallop that had her going hot and cold all over – at the same time. 

She could feel her arms and legs quake with a chill – or something more.  Five o’clock shadow scratched her inner thighs.   His tongue twirled.  His fingers danced.  The wet drenched.  The hot scorched.  The titillating drove her absolutely mad.  The unbearable drove her to... 

The explosion. 

His precise combination of oral mastery and tactile precision had ignited Cassidy like an atomic bomb.  She let forth a feral growl to accompany the initial blast, and it fast-tracked into a howl of blissful agony as he exacted – demanded – far more than she’d thought herself capable of. 

When she was wrung limp from the effort, he became satisfied that she’d given him everything. Jon then eased himself up her rag doll form, hips keeping her thighs parted for him.

“Put your arms around me, baby.”

Her hands had no more weakly settled against his spine than he was there, with the only thing more perfect than her orgasm.  Him.  The way he filled her, the way he stretched her, the way he covered her was brilliance on top of perfection.

“Oh, baby doll, you feel so good.”

Deprived hands came to life and impatiently cavorted along his back, basking in the touch that she’d been previously denied.  His hair became a finger playground, her thighs snugged tight around his hips.  Her pelvis rolled to meet the thrusts that went deeper, harder and more completely than the ones before.

The friction was good, the slick sweat on his back was amazing, the heat of his breath in her ear was exquisite.

“Come for me.”

It wasn’t a demand, but a breathy plea that struck her hard.  She wanted to give it to him, and she very well could if he angled himself just like that…

And kept doing the very thing that he was doing…

Then whispered her name like a prayer…

He did.

She did.

They did.